Lichen

On the north face of the granite wall, where sun arrives late and leaves early, something writes itself in orange script— a language taking centuries to say a single word. Two bodies grown so long together they have forgotten which hunger is whose: the fungus holds the water, the algae drinks the light. Between them a third thing emerges— neither root nor leaf nor spore, but a living map spread across stone, knowing the cold the way cold knows itself. When rain arrives, the lichen wakes and eats a little of the mountain— patient as any love that outlasts the names we give to time.